


Eat At Joe's

by Merkwerkee



Series: Joe's Diner [1]
Category: Masters of the Metaverse
Genre: Metaphysics, how do they work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22857190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: Joe's Diner is more than it appears
Series: Joe's Diner [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643167





	Eat At Joe's

There is always a Joe’s.

Wherever there’s an open offshoot of the Metaverse, wherever there’s sentient life capable of hopping between metaversal branches, wherever someone needs a milkshake and a decent fry-up, there’s a Joe’s. It’s a constant, a diner done up with old neon in whatever language the locals speak proudly announcing that the diner is open and ready for business.

Of course, in an infinite metaverse of infinite combinations, some places are more hospitable for some folks than others. The door of Joe’s Diner will always take you where you need to go, but a door works both ways. Sometimes the door opens and the Diner is full of an oxygen-nitrogen mix, with red vinyl seats that have seen better days shining under fluorescent lamps.

Sometimes the door opens to a thick methane atmosphere, argon lights brilliant pinpoints above seats that glow with a helpful luminescence so patrons can find their seat. Sometimes the door opens to beautifully crystal-blue waters lit by schools of tiny bio-luminescent lifeforms that flitter about the ceiling and tables. Sometimes it opens to a completely gasless chamber where crystals glittering with strange and ineffable energies litter the walls and ceiling and everything is made of perfectly polished carbon formations.

And each patron is where they need to be. Humans and those who breathe oxygen chow down on carbon-based proteins under the humming fluorescents; gelatinous creatures with no discernible features slurp a stew of sulphur-based chemicals in the brilliant argon lights; strangely jolly-looking creatures with large eyes and even larger noselike protrusions crunch calcium-based delicacies as the lights dance to and fro; complex refracted waveforms of sentient energy integrate higher mathematics equations expressed in physical form as eleven-dimensional matrices of crystal made with the perfect amount of symmetry as the lights twist around them.

Cook and Hollywood - and Joe himself, of course - are as much a part of the diner as the seats or the flickering neon sign. Where there is a customer inside the Diner, Hollywood is there to take their order and Cook is there to make it. It’s not bad, most days; Hollywood’s had a lot of time to get used to things. The first few times he’d found himself as a shambling two-foot-tall monstrosity made of something akin to twigs and sphagnum moss had been……Disconcerting, to say the least.

But if there was one thing working at Joe’s gave him, it was time. Now Hollywood could turn around to find himself a complicated series of cellulite-walled tubes strung together by the carbonaceous goo equivalent to silly string that floated in a liquid oxygen environment and communicated by tapping itself together and not bat a proverbial eye. Cook, too, had learned to take changes to himself and his kitchen in stride.

It wasn’t like it was at all separate anyway; at a quantum level, all possible iterations of Joe’s existed at the same time on the same real estate. It didn’t tend to matter much except when a rush hit. When things got really exceptionally busy, Hollywood sometimes found himself turning with a d'kr'tgh of drrnl'th in his hand, only to watch them die as the oxygen-rich atmosphere he found himself in collapsed their tissues. It didn’t happen often but when it did he’d always have to go back to Cook for more, and he’d usually slide in an appetizer free of charge to make up for the wait.

Cook took the quantum-ness of it all as a personal challenge. He switched between the realities of Joe’s more often than Hollywood did, experimenting with dishes and cuisines that were indigestible, illegal, immoral, incoherent, and ineffable to the life he’d started with. Taste-testing his creations was one of the best ways he’d found to stave off boredom during slumps when the door opened less than once an hour, and served him well when the hinges never stopped creaking and customers of all walks wanted their food as soon as they could get it.

Joe himself knows how it all works. After all.

There is.

Always.

A Joe’s.


End file.
